An account of actor Noah Ludlow introducing the popular song
The Hunters of Kentucky while wearing a coonskin cap is
shown to be spurious in Ludlow's autobiography. Ludlow recounted that
initial performance of 1822: "As soon as the comedy of the night
was over, I dressed myself in a buckskin hunting-shirt and leggins, which I
borrowed of a river man, and with moccasins on my
feet and an old slouched hat on my head, and a rifle on my shoulder, I presented myself before
the audience."[2]

20th
century popularity

Estes
Kefauver

Politician Estes Kefauver of Tennessee adopted the
coonskin cap as a personal trademark during his successful 1948 campaign
for election to the United States Senate. Tennessee political bossE. H. Crump had
published advertisements accusing Kefauver of being a raccoon-like
Communist puppet. In response, Kefauver put
on a coonskin cap during a speech in Memphis, proclaiming: "I may be a pet coon, but I'm not Boss Crump's pet
coon."[3]
He continued to use the coonskin cap as a trademark throughout his
political career, which included unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956, an unsuccessful campaign
for the Vice Presidency as
Adlai
Stevenson's running mate in 1956, and successful Senatorial
re-election campaigns in 1954 and 1960.[3]

1950s fad

In the 20th century, the iconic association was in large part
due to Disney's television program
Disneyland
and the first three "Davy Crockett" episodes starring Fess Parker. In the
episodes, which once again made Crockett into one of the most
popular men in the country, the frontier hero was portrayed wearing
a coonskin cap. The show spawned several Disneyland Davy
Crockett sequels as well as other similar shows and movies, with
many of them featuring Parker as the lead actor. Parker went on to
star in a Daniel Boone television
series (1964-1970), again wearing a coonskin cap.

Crockett's new popularity initiated a fad among boys all over the United States
as well as a Davy Crockett
craze in the United Kingdom. The look of the cap that was
marketed to young boys was typically simplified; it was usually a
faux
fur lined skull cap with a raccoon tail attached. A variation
was marketed to young girls as the Polly Crockett hat. It was
similar in style to the boys' cap, including the long tail, but was
made of all-white fur (faux or possibly rabbit). At the peak of the
fad, coonskin caps sold at a rate of 5,000 caps a day.[4] By the
end of the 1950s, Crockett's popularity waned and the fad slowly
died out.

Florida politician Lawton Chiles put
on a coonskin cap while celebrating his 1994 gubernatorial re-election victory over RepublicanJeb Bush, recalling a
campaign statement in which Chiles had predicted victory by saying
"the old he-coon walks just before the light of day."[5]